Impaired Driving

It's not yet zero tolerance for all drivers, but the B.C. government has enacted the Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP) program, reducing the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) threshold for sanctions from 80 mg% to 50 mg%.

Our society's tolerance for drinking and driving continues to narrow. When I started policing in the 1980s it was a major investigation to convict someone for impaired driving. An investigator had to develop skills and experience in the detection of alcohol impaired drivers to form grounds to make a breath demand and convince the court that it was an appropriate decision.

This case looks at host liability for a crash on Saltspring Island following a party at the home of Stephen and Lidia Pearson. Ryan Plambeck drove away from the party, left the roadway and crashed into the woods beside the road. He was killed and Calder McCormick, a passenger in the vehicle was seriously injured.

In the early morning hours of April 25, 2015 Kendall Derkson was driving her vehicle on Highway 10 in Surrey. She struck a vehicle driven by Patrick Chan, destroying her vehicle in the process. ICBC refused to cover her loss as she was in breach of her conditions of insurance for being “incapable of proper control of the vehicle” at the time of the collision due to the influence of alcohol.

A person that left a nightclub had one drink early in the evening and drank water rest of the night because they knew they were driving. This person spoke with many officers upon leaving, went for coffee and gas and saw another officer and spoke with him. He left, driving down the highway a little faster than he should have at approximately 2 am.

In case you missed it, the alcohol impaired supervisor of a learner driver ran afoul of police in Nelson this week. They called upon their son to use the family vehicle to transport them home from a party and were checked in a roadblock.

The B.C. Coroner's Service has released statistics on All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) deaths in the province from 2009 to 2018. Impaired driving was involved in half of them.

Khalid Almardy was stopped by police in the early morning hours of October 21, 2017 in Victoria as he was a novice driver who was not displaying a new driver sign on his vehicle and was carrying too many passengers. Cst. Christians of the Capital Region Integrated Road Safety Unit detected the odour of liquor on Mr. Almardy's breath. Drivers in the Graduated Licensing Program must have zero blood alcohol when driving.

My neighbour regularly drinks and drives, he has been banned from the local liquor store and has run in to a wall with his van. Aside from physically forcing him to stop, who do I report him to before he kills himself and someone else?

Q: I recently dozed off while driving home from work at 1:00 in the afternoon after doing a few late night / early morning shifts. I drove off the road and struck a guardrail doing damage to the truck. RCMP attended and wrote me up for "driving without consideration." I was told it would be $196 fine.